Abstract: A continuous observation to study the vertical distribution of particulate matter has been conducted at Wuxi city during August 13th to 31st 2013. In this experiment, the ground-based particulate LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) system was used for the retrieval the aerosol optical properties (extinction coefficients, depolarization coefficients) varying along with height in clear days, rainy days and polluted days, e.g. haze pollution. The results showed that particulate matter accumulated rather rare in the early morning and in the evening for clear days, while it was rich at noon. The top of particulate matter layer extended to 1.5 km due to the strong convection of airflow in vertical and horizontal direction. In this case, the visibility range reached over 20 km. LiDAR detection also revealed that the rainy clouds covered at 500m off ground level in rainy interval. The extinction coefficients exceeded 2 km-1 due to the large volume of water drops. We found that the visibility was no more than 10 km in raining duration. The fast airflow movement and strong wind combining with wet deposition of atmosphere particles may contribute for the less pollution in rainy days. In polluted episodes, the calm condition was not good for particulate matter dispersing in vertical and horizontal level; therefore, most of the aerosol was trapped in 1 km from ground level. The maximum in the extinction coefficients profile of aerosol always exceed 0.5 km-1 from LiDAR detection. A polluted air mass transferred over-boundary made local air quality worse on August 30th. Model simulation results from HYSPLIT estimated the possible origin of this air mass was from the Northwest of monitoring station. PM2.5 concentration was below 50 ?g/m3 in clear days and rainy days, but the peak value of PM2.5 in haze pollution was closed to 160 ?g/m3. A better consistence between PM2.5 and black carbon (BC) has been shown in polluted days than the other two cases. The climax of BC was approaching 9?g/m3 in polluted period. The exact observations of PM2.5 and BC perfectly supported the detection of LiDAR and together constructed a whole picture of particulate matter vertical distribution for Wuxi city.